Today’s offering is a fairly silly, overdone cover of “Love is a Losing Game,” from Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album. I have a real soft spot for the sound of Back to Black — it’s an amazing bit of work, and I especially like the musical arrangements. Winehouse’s voice works for what she’s asking it to do, and the songwriting is often really interesting. It hits my jazz nerves in all the right places, and it does it with a surprising amount of class for a collection of songs that involve so much general lyrical mayhem. :)

So, yeah, it’s actually a pretty sweet tune, and I wish I could’ve found a way to cover it that preserved some of the elegance of the original arrangement. Sadly, all I could do was cheese it up a lot, so that’s what I did. I think I ruined it, honestly, but I took a shot anyway. :) For this one, I used my acoustic 6-string, 3 violin tracks, electric bass, vocal, and a fake drum track (thank you, Upbeat Funk Drums 04!) from Garage Band. The string parts are all grade-A schmaltz, and it was fun to play them. The drum stuff is there because, honestly, I wanted to experiment with slapping percussion on there. I utterly de-jazzified it, unfortunately, but the result is still kind of fun. It’s absurdly cheerful, which I think is funny. :)

I had a hard time finding appropriate pictures for the slideshow, so you get a lot of the North End Bocce courts and the Grotto of the Redemption. Heh.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About L. M. Bernhardt

For a good long while (15 years or so), I taught philosophy at a little private university in northwest IA, and occasionally branched out into playing music, dabbling in photography, experimenting with food, and writing nonsense on my blog. The philosophy teaching part ended in 2017 (program elimination via prioritization), but never fear! I've just finished my MLIS at San Jose State University, and I'm currently on the market looking for new adventures in either philosophy or LIS. Otherwise, I labor to support my dogs in the lavish manner to which they've become accustomed.